Shadowing a Cheetah

9/19

In the morning we got super lucky and spotted a female cheetah (we also saw a leopard very early in the morning on the way to work).  Helen had left for the week to go to the Serengeti, so it was just Stef and me.  We’ve been wanting to collar some cheetah’s to get Helen’s project off and running, but cheetahs are super hard to find here.  So as soon as we spotted it, we decided to follow it and stay with it.  We contacted some vets (a vet is needed to immobilize a cheetah here) but the earliest they could come would be Monday.  So we were looking at the possibility of staying with the cheetah for 3 days until we could get a vet in.

It’s difficult following a cheetah as it can move through the landscape much better than our landcruiser can.  Plus it blends in and hides so easily in the dense shrubland.  But we stayed with her the whole day as she moved from shade bush to shade bush and unsuccessfully tried sneak up on different prey items.  Twice we lost her, but somehow managed to find her again.  In the late afternoon as we were watching her sunbathe across a ravine, I spotted another bright spot in the distance across the ravine.  A 2^nd cheetah!  We decided to stay with this new male cheetah so that we could get some photos of it as well for later photo ID’s. 

We stayed with the cheetah until past dark when we figured the place he was resting would be where he would stay the night.  We had followed a cheetah from 7am until 9pm.  We went back home for some quick food and bed and then got back up to where we had left the cheetah at 4:30am so that we could continue following it.  Unfortunately, something had scared it away during the night, so it wasn’t there.  We searched for him for a few hours with no luck.  The good news is this meant that we were able to make it to the french toast brunch that Sally was making for the group at the director’s house (I mentioned before that Sally is house sitting for the month while the director is gone, right?) on account of some Jewish celebration.

Saturday night Sally threw a nice party at the director’s place, which included a lot of beer pong, which is always a fun time.  We also did some dancing and made a big bowl of tasty mac n cheese.

9/21

We went down to the confluence of 2 of the rivers that go through Mpala for a nice relaxing Sunday afternoon of swimming in the river.  The group is so small now, so it was just Julia, Sally, Stef, George, and me, which is a fun group.  On the way home we saw  a rare caracal (a small cat with tufted ears) and another cheetah!  We couldn’t follow this one though b/c we were in Julia’s truck which is not suited for bush bashing off road.

9/23  We were hanging out with the wild dogs when a herd of elephants came through.  The elephants were spooked by the dogs and did a lot of crazy trumpeting.  It was really fun to watch them chase the dogs around